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Unto Death
Unto Death contains two beautiful short novels linked by death and destruction.
Crusade is set in 1096 - a year of sinister omens. Count Guillaume of Touron sets out on a crusade to Jerusalem and on the way he serves his God by killing any Jews he meets. But will the Count find the peace of mind he seeks when he faces the terrible realities of war in the Holy Land?
In Late Love Oz portrays an elderly professor living alone in Tel Aviv, a man neither loving nor loved. His last mission is to expose the plight of his fellow Russian Jews and alert the people of Israel to the conspiracy that threatens them. But nobody wants to listen...
Crusade is set in 1096 - a year of sinister omens. Count Guillaume of Touron sets out on a crusade to Jerusalem and on the way he serves his God by killing any Jews he meets. But will the Count find the peace of mind he seeks when he faces the terrible realities of war in the Holy Land?
In Late Love Oz portrays an elderly professor living alone in Tel Aviv, a man neither loving nor loved. His last mission is to expose the plight of his fellow Russian Jews and alert the people of Israel to the conspiracy that threatens them. But nobody wants to listen...
168 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1971
21 people are currently reading
249 people want to read
About the author
Amos Oz
188 books1,650 followersAmos Oz (Hebrew: עמוס עוז; born Amos Klausner) was an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual. He was also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. He was regarded as Israel's most famous living author.
Oz's work has been published in 42 languages in 43 countries, and has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.
Since 1967, Oz had been a prominent advocate of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Oz's work has been published in 42 languages in 43 countries, and has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.
Since 1967, Oz had been a prominent advocate of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
December 23, 2016
Estas dos novelas tienen algo que las une: el rechazo y el miedo hacia los judíos. No diría que intenta explicar esa realidad, simplemente hace con esa idea dos historias muy distintas entre sí, que a la vez tienen varios puntos que las unen.
Una desde el lugar del judío, quien está en absoluta decadencia, con un cuerpo desbordado, decadente, pero que en la mente está activo y presente, aunque sea un poco loco.
En otra, un hombre sale con sus hombres de su casa, y van buscando la tierra prometida, esa tierra a la que nunca llegan, y en el camino van matando a todos los judíos que encuentran, hasta que se pierden en el camino, y de paso van perdiendo la razón.
Me encantó, además, la idea de este profesor, hablando sobre el complot de los bolcheviques rusos en contra de los judíos, que inventan la idea de que los judíos quieren hacer una contrarrevolución para hacer funcionar la revolución, es muy buena.
Quizás porque se pueden seguir pensando mil teorías, de por qué este rechazo y este odio, pero creo que lo que transmite es algo más profundo, sobre ese rechazo y ese miedo a los que son diferentes, o los que vemos diferentes.
Te deja mucho este libro, para reflexionar sobre esta profunda y dolorosa incomprensión entre todos los seres humanos. Tan parecidos, y aún así, sin capacidad para entender la locura de los actos de rechazo hacia los demás.
Amos Oz es una maravilla, hay que leerlo sin duda, empezar por este o por cualquier otro libro suyo, pero empezar y seguir leyéndolo, es una mente lúcida, que nos habla sobre cosas dolorosas, pero presentes, y su reflexión es necesaria para entender las cosas que vemos en este mundo, a veces tan difícil e incomprensible.
Una desde el lugar del judío, quien está en absoluta decadencia, con un cuerpo desbordado, decadente, pero que en la mente está activo y presente, aunque sea un poco loco.
En otra, un hombre sale con sus hombres de su casa, y van buscando la tierra prometida, esa tierra a la que nunca llegan, y en el camino van matando a todos los judíos que encuentran, hasta que se pierden en el camino, y de paso van perdiendo la razón.
Me encantó, además, la idea de este profesor, hablando sobre el complot de los bolcheviques rusos en contra de los judíos, que inventan la idea de que los judíos quieren hacer una contrarrevolución para hacer funcionar la revolución, es muy buena.
Quizás porque se pueden seguir pensando mil teorías, de por qué este rechazo y este odio, pero creo que lo que transmite es algo más profundo, sobre ese rechazo y ese miedo a los que son diferentes, o los que vemos diferentes.
Te deja mucho este libro, para reflexionar sobre esta profunda y dolorosa incomprensión entre todos los seres humanos. Tan parecidos, y aún así, sin capacidad para entender la locura de los actos de rechazo hacia los demás.
Amos Oz es una maravilla, hay que leerlo sin duda, empezar por este o por cualquier otro libro suyo, pero empezar y seguir leyéndolo, es una mente lúcida, que nos habla sobre cosas dolorosas, pero presentes, y su reflexión es necesaria para entender las cosas que vemos en este mundo, a veces tan difícil e incomprensible.
January 3, 2019
Due racconti degli anni 70.
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July 23, 2023
Occasionally when reading an exceptional fine work by an established writer I find myself at a loss for what to say and wonder, not can I compete with what has been said, but do I have anything original to say? Fortunately, thanks to the internet, it is possible to find excellent reviews and rather then attempt and fail to be original I reproduce below the fine review from the New York Times from 1975:
"To be haunted by a subject, to be hunted down and inescapably chosen, as Jewish writers like Elie Wiesel have been chosen, must seem not only a gift of clear mission but at times a tangled burden. For being compelled to take up a great and terrible subject is not the same as finding a fresh way to see it.
Two novellas by the Israeli writer Amos Oz take as their theme the hatred that surrounds Jews and that destroys the hated and the haters alike. "Crusade," which was first published here in Commentary magazine in 1971, and "Late Love," written in 1970, have now appeared in a volume entitled "Unto Death." The translation is by Nicholas de Lange and the author; and apart from occasional clichés (which for all I know may be fair renderings of the Hebrew) the English is equal to the second, subtler theme that runs through these two tales of obsession. This theme is the shifting language in which obsession expresses itself.
"Crusade" is the lurid chronicle of how Count Guillaume de Touron at the end of the 11th century set out for the Holy Land "to take part in its deliverance, and to find peace. . . ." The blight in his vineyard and the huge debts he leaves behind compound with bad omens around the countryside, the death of his wife, rumors of "malicious joy fermenting. . .in the dwellings of the accursed Jews," and then a violent, parting course pronounced upon the Count by a Jew he is burning on a pyre.
But what the Count and his motley entourage leave behind does not leave them; and where they are bound for comes to be elusive. The crusaders corrupt and kill each other. They kill Jews by the village and limb by limb. The Count slips into silence, then into the suspicion that a Jew has insinuated himself among them. The crusaders spend a day killing one Jew until, superstitious about his inability to die, they betray their view to put him out of his agony and leave him bubbling in a pool. The winter's fury carries off a church steeple, slings the "airborne bell" away over the hills weirdly ringing, drives the remaining crusaders into a monastery whose roof they burn to stay warm. The chronicle strangeness is reminiscent of Kleist and Dinesen; the "absurd, melancholy," "contradictory" floor plan of the monastery and the increasing evanescence of the Jerusalem the crusaders seek suggest Calvino.
Oz lets his causes and effects toss about somewhat vaguely in the wind of nature's vengeance and in a cloud of self-torment which is partly that of Christian scapegoat-hunters, partly a deeper delusion. The unknown peace that is hoped for ahead translates into murderous anxiety about a particular Jew. Yet this "malignant presence" of Jewishness is no "outward shape. . .but some abstract quality." And this in turn lets the mind ignore the actual Jew it slaughters, while multiplying the mind's divisions from itself and from the body it is fixed on. The paranoid's "secret sign language which weaves a net between things" yields not mystic wholeness between sense and soul but a fevered oscillation through which Oz can touch flesh and breath as truly as he touches the unseen and designates the abstract. His dislocated crusaders eventually dissolve in the direction of some new "Jerusalem" to be reached through suffering. But if this charity seems more sweeping than convincing, the images by which the sane artist shows the sick, bloodshriveling disjunctions of obsession are clear, terse and magical.
The other novella, "Late Love," is set in Israel, and the time is now. In its materials this story is as different from "Crusade" as Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground" is from Bergman's "The Seventh Seal." But Oz is the same writer in the specific range of his style.
"Late Love" is meditation, warning, confession, first-person definition uttered at the brink of silence by one Shraga Unger, an old Russian emigrant who travels from kibbutz to kibbutz lecturing for the Cultural Bureau. His monologue is wrenched out of pain, fat, tooth decay, blood pressure, the loneliness of endless newspapers; it is spoken against the draining away of time, as against the Tel Aviv heat beneath the sea "crouches. . .menacing." It is spoken with bitter doubt about the point of all these words that reach toward "great themes" but always slip back to stopped- up drains and to the body of one who makes his living by speaking words.
Words seem the only action in "Late Love," but in Unger's "one and only subject," Russian Jewry, there lurks a plot: a Red plot to exterminate the Jews "as a first step toward the dismemberment of the whole world." No wonder the Bureau wants to give Unger a less active job. To me, the Red plot itself didn't seem so mad as the Jewish counter-conspiracies and Eastern European armored counterattacks Unger envisions. But the story's achievement is that in his agony he finds a powerful language of experience. This language may parallel the veering's of Count Guillaume's mania--but somehow Unger's language is whole.
In it he can speak concretely and with sharp delicacy about galactic laws that "never wear out" and the "black light" within the "demented. . .dimensions" of the sea at Israel's edge; he can speak of his need to be physically touched by someone, anyone; most wonderfully of all, he can speak of that beloved Russian soul "torn between savagery and submission," harshness and weeping--speak like Isaac Babel of "galloping cavalry" and the "blaze" that "wounds the western horizon."
Proverbial fantasy, abstract passion, life at the fingertips--this style, which made his novel "Touch the Water, Touch the Wind" so fresh, enables Amos Oz in "Unto Death " to make an ancient subject seem original with him."
It doesn't say everything I might have said in 'Late Love' I would have commented on how Unger's paranoia has allowed him to accept Stalin's anti-Semitic fiction of a 'Jewish Doctor's Plot' as something real and how his reductive and cliched version of the 'Slavic Soul' is actually as ridiculous and racist as the anti-Semitism he is fighting. It may also be hard for readers who have grown up or been born since the collapse of communism not to be amused at the idea of a Soviet Union perceived as a mater or organizational ability!
"To be haunted by a subject, to be hunted down and inescapably chosen, as Jewish writers like Elie Wiesel have been chosen, must seem not only a gift of clear mission but at times a tangled burden. For being compelled to take up a great and terrible subject is not the same as finding a fresh way to see it.
Two novellas by the Israeli writer Amos Oz take as their theme the hatred that surrounds Jews and that destroys the hated and the haters alike. "Crusade," which was first published here in Commentary magazine in 1971, and "Late Love," written in 1970, have now appeared in a volume entitled "Unto Death." The translation is by Nicholas de Lange and the author; and apart from occasional clichés (which for all I know may be fair renderings of the Hebrew) the English is equal to the second, subtler theme that runs through these two tales of obsession. This theme is the shifting language in which obsession expresses itself.
"Crusade" is the lurid chronicle of how Count Guillaume de Touron at the end of the 11th century set out for the Holy Land "to take part in its deliverance, and to find peace. . . ." The blight in his vineyard and the huge debts he leaves behind compound with bad omens around the countryside, the death of his wife, rumors of "malicious joy fermenting. . .in the dwellings of the accursed Jews," and then a violent, parting course pronounced upon the Count by a Jew he is burning on a pyre.
But what the Count and his motley entourage leave behind does not leave them; and where they are bound for comes to be elusive. The crusaders corrupt and kill each other. They kill Jews by the village and limb by limb. The Count slips into silence, then into the suspicion that a Jew has insinuated himself among them. The crusaders spend a day killing one Jew until, superstitious about his inability to die, they betray their view to put him out of his agony and leave him bubbling in a pool. The winter's fury carries off a church steeple, slings the "airborne bell" away over the hills weirdly ringing, drives the remaining crusaders into a monastery whose roof they burn to stay warm. The chronicle strangeness is reminiscent of Kleist and Dinesen; the "absurd, melancholy," "contradictory" floor plan of the monastery and the increasing evanescence of the Jerusalem the crusaders seek suggest Calvino.
Oz lets his causes and effects toss about somewhat vaguely in the wind of nature's vengeance and in a cloud of self-torment which is partly that of Christian scapegoat-hunters, partly a deeper delusion. The unknown peace that is hoped for ahead translates into murderous anxiety about a particular Jew. Yet this "malignant presence" of Jewishness is no "outward shape. . .but some abstract quality." And this in turn lets the mind ignore the actual Jew it slaughters, while multiplying the mind's divisions from itself and from the body it is fixed on. The paranoid's "secret sign language which weaves a net between things" yields not mystic wholeness between sense and soul but a fevered oscillation through which Oz can touch flesh and breath as truly as he touches the unseen and designates the abstract. His dislocated crusaders eventually dissolve in the direction of some new "Jerusalem" to be reached through suffering. But if this charity seems more sweeping than convincing, the images by which the sane artist shows the sick, bloodshriveling disjunctions of obsession are clear, terse and magical.
The other novella, "Late Love," is set in Israel, and the time is now. In its materials this story is as different from "Crusade" as Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground" is from Bergman's "The Seventh Seal." But Oz is the same writer in the specific range of his style.
"Late Love" is meditation, warning, confession, first-person definition uttered at the brink of silence by one Shraga Unger, an old Russian emigrant who travels from kibbutz to kibbutz lecturing for the Cultural Bureau. His monologue is wrenched out of pain, fat, tooth decay, blood pressure, the loneliness of endless newspapers; it is spoken against the draining away of time, as against the Tel Aviv heat beneath the sea "crouches. . .menacing." It is spoken with bitter doubt about the point of all these words that reach toward "great themes" but always slip back to stopped- up drains and to the body of one who makes his living by speaking words.
Words seem the only action in "Late Love," but in Unger's "one and only subject," Russian Jewry, there lurks a plot: a Red plot to exterminate the Jews "as a first step toward the dismemberment of the whole world." No wonder the Bureau wants to give Unger a less active job. To me, the Red plot itself didn't seem so mad as the Jewish counter-conspiracies and Eastern European armored counterattacks Unger envisions. But the story's achievement is that in his agony he finds a powerful language of experience. This language may parallel the veering's of Count Guillaume's mania--but somehow Unger's language is whole.
In it he can speak concretely and with sharp delicacy about galactic laws that "never wear out" and the "black light" within the "demented. . .dimensions" of the sea at Israel's edge; he can speak of his need to be physically touched by someone, anyone; most wonderfully of all, he can speak of that beloved Russian soul "torn between savagery and submission," harshness and weeping--speak like Isaac Babel of "galloping cavalry" and the "blaze" that "wounds the western horizon."
Proverbial fantasy, abstract passion, life at the fingertips--this style, which made his novel "Touch the Water, Touch the Wind" so fresh, enables Amos Oz in "Unto Death " to make an ancient subject seem original with him."
It doesn't say everything I might have said in 'Late Love' I would have commented on how Unger's paranoia has allowed him to accept Stalin's anti-Semitic fiction of a 'Jewish Doctor's Plot' as something real and how his reductive and cliched version of the 'Slavic Soul' is actually as ridiculous and racist as the anti-Semitism he is fighting. It may also be hard for readers who have grown up or been born since the collapse of communism not to be amused at the idea of a Soviet Union perceived as a mater or organizational ability!
January 10, 2022
Sinossi editoriale
Un uomo che di fronte al proprio inesorabile declino constata l’amara dissipazione delle occasioni ormai perdute e una banda di sgangherati crociati che non arriveranno mai in Terra Santa: due storie molto lontane fra loro nel tempo e nello spazio, ma che raccontano in fondo la stessa malinconia di vivere, la stessa disperata ricerca di un senso per se stessi e per il mondo. Un’ossessione è ciò che spinge Shraga Unger, conferenziere nei kibbutz, che racconta a chiunque lo ascolti di un piano mondiale dei bolscevichi per sterminare il popolo ebraico. Ma la vecchiaia e la solitudine premono sul suo corpo in disfacimento, e potrebbe non riuscire ad avvertire tutti come vorrebbe.
Un’ossessione spinge anche il conte Guillaume de Touron, che nel 1096 cerca la redenzione nella Crociata, ma per quanti infedeli lui e i suoi improvvisati compagni guerrieri potranno trucidare sulla strada per Gerusalemme, la pace d’animo continuerà a sfuggirgli, e l’idea che un ebreo sia con loro sotto mentite spoglie a perseguitarlo.
Con il suo sguardo lucido e profondo, Amos Oz conduce il lettore in una Tel Aviv e un Israele che non esistono più, e in un’Europa arcaica e crudele: al cuore di tutto c’è un’umanità in cui, malgrado la distanza, non si può fare a meno di riconoscersi.
“Conciso, preciso, lineare, uno stile che ricorda Čechov o Gogol'”
Le Magazine littéraire
Un uomo che di fronte al proprio inesorabile declino constata l’amara dissipazione delle occasioni ormai perdute e una banda di sgangherati crociati che non arriveranno mai in Terra Santa: due storie molto lontane fra loro nel tempo e nello spazio, ma che raccontano in fondo la stessa malinconia di vivere, la stessa disperata ricerca di un senso per se stessi e per il mondo. Un’ossessione è ciò che spinge Shraga Unger, conferenziere nei kibbutz, che racconta a chiunque lo ascolti di un piano mondiale dei bolscevichi per sterminare il popolo ebraico. Ma la vecchiaia e la solitudine premono sul suo corpo in disfacimento, e potrebbe non riuscire ad avvertire tutti come vorrebbe.
Un’ossessione spinge anche il conte Guillaume de Touron, che nel 1096 cerca la redenzione nella Crociata, ma per quanti infedeli lui e i suoi improvvisati compagni guerrieri potranno trucidare sulla strada per Gerusalemme, la pace d’animo continuerà a sfuggirgli, e l’idea che un ebreo sia con loro sotto mentite spoglie a perseguitarlo.
Con il suo sguardo lucido e profondo, Amos Oz conduce il lettore in una Tel Aviv e un Israele che non esistono più, e in un’Europa arcaica e crudele: al cuore di tutto c’è un’umanità in cui, malgrado la distanza, non si può fare a meno di riconoscersi.
“Conciso, preciso, lineare, uno stile che ricorda Čechov o Gogol'”
Le Magazine littéraire
April 27, 2015
Ojo especialmente a la segunda historia. Unos cruzados cada vez más demenciados cabalgan en dirección a Tierra Santa dejando a su paso el camino Judenrein. Puro Meridiano de Sangre de Mcarthy.
August 18, 2023
"הספר מורכב משתי נובלות: "אהבה מאוחרת" ו"עד מוות.
לא ברור לי מדוע קובצו 2 הנובלות הללו לספר אחד שכן הן כה שונות במהותן, למעט האישיות האובססיבית של גיבוריהן.
אהבה מאוחרת פשוט משעמם עד מוות ו"עד מוות" הוא סיפור היסטורי, אכזרי באופן בלתי רגיל וגם לא מצאתי אותו כה מעניין בניגוד לקוראים אחרים שהתרשמו מאד.
לא ברור לי מדוע קובצו 2 הנובלות הללו לספר אחד שכן הן כה שונות במהותן, למעט האישיות האובססיבית של גיבוריהן.
אהבה מאוחרת פשוט משעמם עד מוות ו"עד מוות" הוא סיפור היסטורי, אכזרי באופן בלתי רגיל וגם לא מצאתי אותו כה מעניין בניגוד לקוראים אחרים שהתרשמו מאד.
September 5, 2025
on en veut presque plus sur la croisade
November 18, 2020
Para el RL del mes pasado fue muy difícil escoger un libro. Así que fue una decisión totalmente al azar.
Y realmente me agradó este título.
La obra está compuesta por dos novelas cortas, la primera de ellas es Amor tardío y, la segunda, la que le da el nombre al libro, Hasta la muerte.
La primera novela es, de principio a fin, muy sombría. Algo de lo que disfruté mucho, es de la profundidad psicológica del protagonista; yo considero que es un personaje muy bien logrado, muy bien desarrollado. Aunado a ello, la narración es bastante dinámica, tiene muchos matices; de repente es muy acelerada y realza la inestabilidad y/o paranoia del personaje principal, y de repente resulta una narrativa bastante densa, fatalista, sombría. Además, algo que destaca es que constantemente cambia el tipo de narrador, aunque da la sensación de ser una sola voz narrativa.
En cuanto a la segunda novela, desarrollada en la Edad Media, también logra sorprender por la brutalidad de su narración. Resulta interesante, además, porque demuestra la versatilidad del autor, que logra adentrar al lector a una época totalmente distinta a la de hoy.
Solo puedo decir que ambas historias tienen algo en común. No solo el hecho de que abordan una realidad muy distinta a la nuestra, sino que expresan la naturaleza salvaje y conspiranoica del ser humano.
Pd. Hace meses que no escribía una reseña por aquí. He dejado muchos libros a medias. El trabajo me ha absorbido por completo. Ayuda. xd
Y realmente me agradó este título.
La obra está compuesta por dos novelas cortas, la primera de ellas es Amor tardío y, la segunda, la que le da el nombre al libro, Hasta la muerte.
La primera novela es, de principio a fin, muy sombría. Algo de lo que disfruté mucho, es de la profundidad psicológica del protagonista; yo considero que es un personaje muy bien logrado, muy bien desarrollado. Aunado a ello, la narración es bastante dinámica, tiene muchos matices; de repente es muy acelerada y realza la inestabilidad y/o paranoia del personaje principal, y de repente resulta una narrativa bastante densa, fatalista, sombría. Además, algo que destaca es que constantemente cambia el tipo de narrador, aunque da la sensación de ser una sola voz narrativa.
En cuanto a la segunda novela, desarrollada en la Edad Media, también logra sorprender por la brutalidad de su narración. Resulta interesante, además, porque demuestra la versatilidad del autor, que logra adentrar al lector a una época totalmente distinta a la de hoy.
Solo puedo decir que ambas historias tienen algo en común. No solo el hecho de que abordan una realidad muy distinta a la nuestra, sino que expresan la naturaleza salvaje y conspiranoica del ser humano.
Pd. Hace meses que no escribía una reseña por aquí. He dejado muchos libros a medias. El trabajo me ha absorbido por completo. Ayuda. xd
September 4, 2021
Dos grotescas fábulas (una el anverso de la otra) sobre la naturaleza del odio y el miedo (que muchas veces son la misma cosa). En específico, el odio y el miedo hacia lo distinto. Dos novelas escritas en etapas muy diferentes de la vida del autor, pero que se complementan magníficamente: ambas mantienen una coherencia fascinante. Un autor complejo que pienso leer con más atención.
July 27, 2012
From a review I wrote of a later Oz work:
"Amos Oz has sometimes taken an unusual approach to short fiction, combining pieces in surprising ways. Unto Death, which first appeared in English in 1975, was particularly effective, juxtaposing two novellas with striking results. In the first, “Crusade”, Count Guillaume de Touron, haunted by the idea of a secret Jew in his entourage, fails disastrously to lead a band of knights to the Holy Land. The barbaric treatment they had previously reserved for Jews they now inflict upon each other. The second, “Late Love”, is about an Israeli settler living in terror of Soviet anti-Semitism. Together these very different stories present a portrait of hatred, its effect on both those who feel it towards others and those who suffer it. The mythical European emblem of Jews as “some abstract quality” is struck aside to reveal an actual Jew, centuries later, still obsessed with the discredited invention, convinced it controls his relations with others."
"Amos Oz has sometimes taken an unusual approach to short fiction, combining pieces in surprising ways. Unto Death, which first appeared in English in 1975, was particularly effective, juxtaposing two novellas with striking results. In the first, “Crusade”, Count Guillaume de Touron, haunted by the idea of a secret Jew in his entourage, fails disastrously to lead a band of knights to the Holy Land. The barbaric treatment they had previously reserved for Jews they now inflict upon each other. The second, “Late Love”, is about an Israeli settler living in terror of Soviet anti-Semitism. Together these very different stories present a portrait of hatred, its effect on both those who feel it towards others and those who suffer it. The mythical European emblem of Jews as “some abstract quality” is struck aside to reveal an actual Jew, centuries later, still obsessed with the discredited invention, convinced it controls his relations with others."
September 3, 2016
Uy, sólo leí el primero y no me gustó.
Amo a Amoz por su gran gran historia sobre amor y oscuridad
Pero el resto de sus libros no me terminan de gustar...chin.
Amo a Amoz por su gran gran historia sobre amor y oscuridad
Pero el resto de sus libros no me terminan de gustar...chin.
November 15, 2020
"Sun, I say, with all due respect, what do you hope to find here?"
Well well well,
Left speechless once again.
This book was really hard to follow, which makes sense since it's old and complicated english, and I am not a native English speaker. However, it surprised me.
I started this book with no expectations. A book without a dusk jacket or a description. This book is dark and sad, and confusing very often. It exists of two short stories, totally unrelated. They both end, well, surprisingly.
I enjoyed reading this one, and I recommend it if you're into dark fiction and older works.
"But the forest had a music of its own, deep and dim"
Well well well,
Left speechless once again.
This book was really hard to follow, which makes sense since it's old and complicated english, and I am not a native English speaker. However, it surprised me.
I started this book with no expectations. A book without a dusk jacket or a description. This book is dark and sad, and confusing very often. It exists of two short stories, totally unrelated. They both end, well, surprisingly.
I enjoyed reading this one, and I recommend it if you're into dark fiction and older works.
"But the forest had a music of its own, deep and dim"
January 16, 2013
A pair of novellas told from opposite sides of the same coin. "Crusade" is about a doomed band of crusaders out to kill infidel Jews during the middle ages. "Late Love" is about a aging Jewish crusader out to warn modern Israelis about the impending destruction of the Jews by Russian invaders. Both stories are about the futility of hatred, and its ultimately destructive influence. Mostly enjoyable. "Crusade" is definitely the better story. "Late Love" had a few too many rants and I found myself skimming the prose way too much. Still, a satisfying read.
June 22, 2020
Oz continues his examination of the nature of evil, specifically within the past and present consciousness of the Jewish people. Israelis have learned to live with bad dreams which turn out to be real
October 14, 2010
Two stars for the story, four stars for the writing. I kept skimming over whole paragraphs, but suddenly stopping and rereading a beautiful sentence or two.
January 2, 2016
I am sorry to say, because I kind of admire Amos Oz, that this is not a book I may recommend.
January 31, 2021
Dos historias que se desarrollan en diferentes épocas y lugares pero que dan a conocer rasgos de la cultura judía, el odio y la persecusión que han sufrido históricamente.
November 8, 2021
Dos relatos diferentes con un denominador común: la muerte al final del camino. Interesante.
June 11, 2023
"Sin la gracia del cielo, todos y cada uno de nosotros seremos atrapados sin remedio en la red tendida a nuestro pies"
Nos narra dos cuentos: "hasta la muerte" y "amor tardio". Sentís palpable el odio que narra la historia a los judíos. Los personajes tienen sus personalidad y no te dejan indiferente ninguno. Cuentan el día a día en la vida cotidiana en Israel. Con sus luchas y la precariedad de los ciudadanos.
Sin embargo me aburrió, incluso aunque me hizo sentir, y no me dejo indiferente para nada. Al llegar al final me quede pensando, ¿Qué leí?¿Cómo llegue hasta acá?
Me sentí decepcionada y lo termine por ver si cambiaba algo, cosa que no paso. Seguro busque otro libro de este país, ¿saben de alguno?
"Considero la muerte un asunto casi anecdótico, un acontecimiento casual y burdo, una especie de truco barato".
Nos narra dos cuentos: "hasta la muerte" y "amor tardio". Sentís palpable el odio que narra la historia a los judíos. Los personajes tienen sus personalidad y no te dejan indiferente ninguno. Cuentan el día a día en la vida cotidiana en Israel. Con sus luchas y la precariedad de los ciudadanos.
Sin embargo me aburrió, incluso aunque me hizo sentir, y no me dejo indiferente para nada. Al llegar al final me quede pensando, ¿Qué leí?¿Cómo llegue hasta acá?
Me sentí decepcionada y lo termine por ver si cambiaba algo, cosa que no paso. Seguro busque otro libro de este país, ¿saben de alguno?
"Considero la muerte un asunto casi anecdótico, un acontecimiento casual y burdo, una especie de truco barato".
June 15, 2019
"Nulla è invano. Tutto dura per sempre. Nessun benché minimo movimento, nessuna azione, nulla si può annullare. Neanche un granello di sabbia va perso. E poi che cosa significherebbe, 'andare perso'? Insulsaggine, è insulso dire così. Esiste forse qualcosa che è capace di trasformarsi improvvisamente in nulla? Può forse qualcosa prendere e uscire dal cosmo? Certo che no. Tutto sta racchiuso lì dentro. Chiuso in senso letterale. Chiuso da ogni lato.
Supponiamo allora che un bel giorno un pensiero si trasformi in parole, nero su bianco su un foglio. E allora? Il pensiero è rinchiuso nelle parole, e non potrà mai uscirne fuori. Non esiste un evento, per quanto piccolo, che si possa annullare.
A ben guardare, dico io, si può pure stabilire una legge: ogni evento è un evento cruciale." (Amore tardivo, p. 28)
Supponiamo allora che un bel giorno un pensiero si trasformi in parole, nero su bianco su un foglio. E allora? Il pensiero è rinchiuso nelle parole, e non potrà mai uscirne fuori. Non esiste un evento, per quanto piccolo, che si possa annullare.
A ben guardare, dico io, si può pure stabilire una legge: ogni evento è un evento cruciale." (Amore tardivo, p. 28)
October 12, 2023
Este es el quinto libro que leo del escritor israelí Amos Oz. Me gusta mucho como escribe, su claridad narrativa y su manera de contar. Aunque este libro de Amos Oz no sea uno de mis preferidos, me ha gustado leerlo y lo he disfrutado. Siempre que acabo un libro de este escritor pienso en cual será el siguiente que leeré de él.
September 14, 2017
¡Vaya si me tardé en leer este libro!
Sobretodo si tomamos en cuenta que tiene muy pocas páginas, pero bueno, vamos a la calificación.
Si, le di 4*, debo ser objetiva y darle la calificación que se merece independientemente de que no me gustó, no me enganché y creo que si me hicieran un examen sobre mi retención respecto a la historia, reprobaría.
Pero es un libro muy bien escrito, con un lenguaje fluido, limpio. La prosa es buena, las descripciones también. Por ejemplo, la primer historia (sí, hay que mencionar que el libro se divide en dos historias una de un viejito deprimente y otra de unos locos que van por ahí matando judíos) logra hacerte sentir la decadencia y repugnancia que siente el protagonista hacia su persona, hacia la vida y sus enemigos un tanto imaginarios.
Pero aún así, no sé, supongo que no es el tipo de lecturas que me gustan en estos momentos de mi vida, puede que esté buscando emociones mas intensas, que sé yo.
No me atrevería a recomendarlo, o quizá, la verdad Amos Oz me pareció un buen escritor, aunque no se si tenga el valor para leer alguna otra de sus obras; que se yo, todo puede pasar.
Sobretodo si tomamos en cuenta que tiene muy pocas páginas, pero bueno, vamos a la calificación.
Si, le di 4*, debo ser objetiva y darle la calificación que se merece independientemente de que no me gustó, no me enganché y creo que si me hicieran un examen sobre mi retención respecto a la historia, reprobaría.
Pero es un libro muy bien escrito, con un lenguaje fluido, limpio. La prosa es buena, las descripciones también. Por ejemplo, la primer historia (sí, hay que mencionar que el libro se divide en dos historias una de un viejito deprimente y otra de unos locos que van por ahí matando judíos) logra hacerte sentir la decadencia y repugnancia que siente el protagonista hacia su persona, hacia la vida y sus enemigos un tanto imaginarios.
Pero aún así, no sé, supongo que no es el tipo de lecturas que me gustan en estos momentos de mi vida, puede que esté buscando emociones mas intensas, que sé yo.
No me atrevería a recomendarlo, o quizá, la verdad Amos Oz me pareció un buen escritor, aunque no se si tenga el valor para leer alguna otra de sus obras; que se yo, todo puede pasar.
August 22, 2021
"C'è al mondo una tacita linea sino alla quale le parole possono arrivare, oltre la quale c'è il silenzio dell'immensità."
Finché morte non sopraggiunga, l'uomo ha due scelte: o riempire le proprie giornate di parole e circondarsi di persone che ascoltano, o ascoltare stando in silenzio mentre la vita passa. I due racconti che compongono questo libro parlano sostanzialmente di questo.
La morte è un limite, un orizzonte, una meta sempre presente alla mente. E allora l'anziano protagonista del primo racconto non si rassegna alla pensione e continua imperterrito il suo lavoro da oratore, convinto di essere ancora utile. Mentre il conte protagonista del secondo racconto impegna se stesso e i suoi sottoposti alla prima crociata, per purificare e punire se stesso in un viaggio in cui la meta è solo un punto su una carta.
Amos Oz regala una narrazione non lineare, fatta di intersecazioni narrative e riflessive e periodi minimali e corti. Chi si aspetta due racconti classici sarà deluso: tutto ruota attorno a significati e messaggi che si accavallano e che costringono ad un'attenzione sempre desta.
Finché morte non sopraggiunga, l'uomo ha due scelte: o riempire le proprie giornate di parole e circondarsi di persone che ascoltano, o ascoltare stando in silenzio mentre la vita passa. I due racconti che compongono questo libro parlano sostanzialmente di questo.
La morte è un limite, un orizzonte, una meta sempre presente alla mente. E allora l'anziano protagonista del primo racconto non si rassegna alla pensione e continua imperterrito il suo lavoro da oratore, convinto di essere ancora utile. Mentre il conte protagonista del secondo racconto impegna se stesso e i suoi sottoposti alla prima crociata, per purificare e punire se stesso in un viaggio in cui la meta è solo un punto su una carta.
Amos Oz regala una narrazione non lineare, fatta di intersecazioni narrative e riflessive e periodi minimali e corti. Chi si aspetta due racconti classici sarà deluso: tutto ruota attorno a significati e messaggi che si accavallano e che costringono ad un'attenzione sempre desta.
December 24, 2016
2 stories. One, a dark reminder of ancient hatred. How the Jews were tolerated and hated and used by lords and peasants alike as scapegoats and targets and sources of fear and mystery. A reminder of the cruelty of people when the other is dehumanized.
The other story unrelated. Small. Claustrophobic. Introspective. Also giving a glimmer of insight into some arcane issues of the early State of Israel and the mind of a depressed and lonely character.
Quick reads, both. Thought provoking but sad, especially now that the days are short and dark as well.
Each story I put down with a shake of the head and a long pause to contemplate. The world of Amos Oz is not a light and colorful place. It reminds me of the shtetl's of Jewish peasants, of Middle Earth scorched by war, and a world dominated by confusion and hatred. Insert here head-shake and pause.
The other story unrelated. Small. Claustrophobic. Introspective. Also giving a glimmer of insight into some arcane issues of the early State of Israel and the mind of a depressed and lonely character.
Quick reads, both. Thought provoking but sad, especially now that the days are short and dark as well.
Each story I put down with a shake of the head and a long pause to contemplate. The world of Amos Oz is not a light and colorful place. It reminds me of the shtetl's of Jewish peasants, of Middle Earth scorched by war, and a world dominated by confusion and hatred. Insert here head-shake and pause.
March 25, 2021
Dos historias conforman este libro: Amor tardío y Hasta la muerte. La primera trata sobre un profesor y orador que rechaza a la unión soviética por los supuestos ataques que harán al pueblo de Israel; pero también nos cuenta el desprecio corporal que siente hacia sí mismo, y cómo su aspecto y forma de ser lo llevan a alejarse más y más de las personas, especialmente las mujeres. Pero, anteponiéndose al pesar, sus visiones y opiniones anticomunistas no cambiarán y buscarán advertir a los judíos sobre los futuros desastres. Y la segunda historia trata sobre unas crónicas que relatan el viaje de un grupo de cruzados hacia Jerusalén, propagando la muerte y sus pensamientos bíblicos que, en vez de darles satisfacción por cumplir con su cometido, se irá diluyendo, y la sensación que les quedará es un sinsentido que frenará su avance (sin sentido plagado de enfermedad y privaciones).
November 6, 2021
Amos Oz onkin ollut listalla jo pitkään.
En tiedä kuinka paljon Kuolemaan asti muistuttaa herran muuta tuotantoa, mutta tämä oli ainakin ihan silleen kiinnostavaa. Kirjan kaksi tarinaa ovat ulkoisesti aika erilaisia: toinen kertoo ristiretkelle vuonna 1099 lähtevästä kreivistä ja tämän omituisesta palvelijasta ja toinen taas Israel kulttuuriministeriön kiertelevästä luennoitsijasta.
Tarinat ovat kuitenkin selkeästi samasta puusta veistetty. Molempien ytimessä on jonkinlainen kuviteellinen salaliitto. Ja molemmissa käsitellään vahvasti antisemitismiä. Molemmissa kertomuksissa on myös liki herkullisen groteskeja kuvauksia, Oz selvästi osaa laittaa lukijansa hieman irvistämään. Erityisesti jälkimmäisen kertomuksen kertojan kehollinen itseinho oli kuvailtu erinomaisesti.
Nämä eivät ehkä olleet erinomaisia kertomuksia, mutta riittivät ihan herättämään kiinnostuksen.
En tiedä kuinka paljon Kuolemaan asti muistuttaa herran muuta tuotantoa, mutta tämä oli ainakin ihan silleen kiinnostavaa. Kirjan kaksi tarinaa ovat ulkoisesti aika erilaisia: toinen kertoo ristiretkelle vuonna 1099 lähtevästä kreivistä ja tämän omituisesta palvelijasta ja toinen taas Israel kulttuuriministeriön kiertelevästä luennoitsijasta.
Tarinat ovat kuitenkin selkeästi samasta puusta veistetty. Molempien ytimessä on jonkinlainen kuviteellinen salaliitto. Ja molemmissa käsitellään vahvasti antisemitismiä. Molemmissa kertomuksissa on myös liki herkullisen groteskeja kuvauksia, Oz selvästi osaa laittaa lukijansa hieman irvistämään. Erityisesti jälkimmäisen kertomuksen kertojan kehollinen itseinho oli kuvailtu erinomaisesti.
Nämä eivät ehkä olleet erinomaisia kertomuksia, mutta riittivät ihan herättämään kiinnostuksen.
September 30, 2021
My first foray into the land of Oz. This one had been sitting on my shelf for quite a few years. It consists of two early novellas, first published in 1971, which seem quite remarkable when you consider that Oz was only around 30 when he wrote them. The first, Crusade, was my favourite, providing a grim portrait of a fruitless quest of a would-be crusader in 1096 that descends into bleak surrealism. The second, Late Love, goes beyond the author's limited years to portray an old Israeli intellectual descending into despair and the world of conspiracy in a way that seems all too prescient of modern times. I'll definitely be checking out more by Oz.
August 28, 2020
Un par de novelas cortas. Creo que el mensaje central está en el sentido de la vida. En la búsqueda de trascender hasta el último momento. La narrativa de Oz tiene esa característica de la fluidez que hace que la lectura sea suave y no te abrume.
A través de historias sencillas logra llevar un mensaje de trasfondo de mayor envergadura. Si se lee únicamente lo escrito no se descubre más que la historia de dos personajes sin mucho interés, lo más atrayente de estas dos novelas es lo que no se dice.
A través de historias sencillas logra llevar un mensaje de trasfondo de mayor envergadura. Si se lee únicamente lo escrito no se descubre más que la historia de dos personajes sin mucho interés, lo más atrayente de estas dos novelas es lo que no se dice.
March 25, 2025
This collection of two short stories/novellas from 1971 is a quick and interesting read, but I found the second, "Crusade" a little hard to follow and had to start rereading it after a few pages. I realized I hadn't really taken much of it in. In the end I wasn't sure if struggeling through paid off.
"Late Love" - a story about Shraga Unger, an old Russian emigrant who travels from kibbutz to kibbutz lecturing for the Cultural Bureau and feels his irrelevance in every bone - was the more powerful story. It felt like something that would stick with me. Time will tell.
"Late Love" - a story about Shraga Unger, an old Russian emigrant who travels from kibbutz to kibbutz lecturing for the Cultural Bureau and feels his irrelevance in every bone - was the more powerful story. It felt like something that would stick with me. Time will tell.
January 29, 2019
Exquisitamente escrito, el primer cuento es sobre la vejez de un hombre en el contexto judío, es un poco deprimente, no es algo que recomendaría leer, pero me gustó como una novela histórica de Tel Avid. El segundo cuenta sobre una cruzada de franceses a tierra santa y también un poco obscuro y deprimente. Sin duda muy bien escrito.
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